Instead of calling 911, instead of digging a fire
line, instead of forming a bucket brigade to a
stream, we sat down and had lunch. Time
seemed to disappear in dusky sunlight and
smoke. We sat and watched fire just as we
would have watched rain.
But what's natural and what's human may
be quite different. Though setting prescribed
fires can be dramatic, involving flamethrowers
and incendiary plastic balls dropped from
helicopters, it will never have the pure human
drama of trying to put fire out.
Firefighters are heroes. Pyne has argued
that fire fighting has been an answer to Wil
liam James's call for the moral equivalent of
war: People jump out of airplanes or drive big
trucks fast on bad roads, face hazard and pain
with people they care about, and in the end
inevitably triumph, even if rain is the real vic
tor. When I was at the Vision Fire in Califor
nia, someone had hung pictures from grateful
schoolchildren on the command-center walls.
"Firefighters: Nicasio School Says Thank
You," one read. This is glory. There is little
glory in walking around a prairie or a pine
forest with a drip torch.
"The first is war and the second is work,"
said Neil Sampson of American Forests. "And
people look at war and work very differently."
WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF FIRE? NO
one is arguing that the fire
suppression machine should be
dismantled. When the land dries out and the
hot wind roars, people will always make a
stand. Even the most vigorous advocates of
increased fire use argue only that suppression
should be balanced with more prescribed fires
and that more - but not all -naturally ignited
fires should be allowed to burn.
"In principle that's been possible for 25
years," Pyne told me. "But in spite of some
symbolic successes, we haven't translated pol
icy into practice. The problem is to get the
right mix-how much fire to apply, how much
to withhold."
Pyne doesn't see much hope that Americans
will develop a relationship with fire anytime
soon that resembles the balance that existed
before industrialization.
If he's right, what will happen?
Landscapes dominated by fire-dependent
or fire-tolerant species will not die if they're
deprived of fire, but they will change. It would
be like abruptly changing the official language
136
Bomblets save bird habitat at Eglin Air Force Base
in the Florida Panhandle. Wildland fire specialist
Gary Lindsay drops incendiary plastic balls from a
helicopter to burn underbrush on the 724-square
mile base in order to prevent young oaks from
crowding out essential longleaf and loblolly pine.
of a country. Suddenly a small group of immi
grants would flourish, and even the most able
people who could not learn the new language
would struggle to survive.
Since fire played a large role in most North
American ecosystems, the effects of trying to
suppress it are widespread. Ponderosa pine
NationalGeographic, September 1996